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Kathmandu Friday January 19, 2001 Magh 06, 2057.
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Here comes the fitness boom
By Rebecca Harding
KATHMANDU - What were your new millennium
resolutions? Go on, admit it - did becoming healthier and doing more exercise feature high
on your list?
In a country where most people get more than
their fair share of exercise by dint of their lifestyle and harsh physical environment,
exercising to simply keep in shape may seem like an alien concept to the vast majority of
Nepal’s population. It is ironic that in a country where, for many, painstaking
physical labour leads to an early grave, others - in true Western style - are heading for
an untimely death due to lack of exercise and an unhealthy lifestyle.
This fear has given rise to a new obsession in
Kathmandu. The fitness bug is fast catching on. Five-star health clubs and gyms are
springing up across the city, inundated with applications from would-be fitness
enthusiasts at the dawn of the New Year. Has the fitness frenzy finally hit Nepal?
‘It’s important for me to keep in
shape,’ says Rajani, sipping on a herbal tea in a Kathmandu hotel lounge, glowing
after a gruelling one-hour workout with her personal fitness instructor. "The
euphoria I feel after exercising makes up for all the sweat and tears. It can be quite
addictive".
In the West, many women spend huge amounts of
money on gym membership, health farms and new clothes in order to make themselves look
slimmer - some Hollywood celebrities even hire their own personal dieticians. According to
the US National Institutes of Health and Centres for Disease Control, more than 30% of
Americans are 20% or more overweight, and one third of women and more than one quarter of
men are trying to lose weight at any given time. They have good reason to lose weight:
obesity is severely stigmatized in their society. The social hazards of being overweight
in the US are considerable.
Fitness and diet magazines do a roaring trade
and if these would-be sylph-like readers aren’t glued to the pages of a diet
magazine, then you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll be gazing green-eyed at some
willowy beauty gracing the pages of Vogue or Tatler. "Thin is beautiful" - is
the siren call of the glossy magazines.
The fitness trade is burgeoning in Kathmandu.
Sanjiv Soreng, Manager of the Fitness Centre at the exclusive Radisson hotel says that his
health club in Kathmandu is the most popular in his chain that operates 65 centres in 17
countries, including Japan, Singapore, Thailand and India. With streets too polluted to
run in and swimming pools too icy to swim in what’s a Kathmandu fitness enthusiast to
do? They’re hotfooting their way to the five-star gyms faster than their Nikes can
carry them.
"More and more Nepalis - women especially -
are taking care of their physiques," says Soreng. Most of his regular Nepali clients
are women in their early to mid-thirties. "By nature of our male-dominated society,
women who don’t work, have plenty of free time to dedicate to keeping in trim."
This trend, however, only serves to highlight
the growing gulf between Nepal’s rich and poor. These Kathmandu gym goers aren’t
just rich, they’re very rich. Their fitness comes at a price - annual health club
membership topping Rs 50,000 at the topnotch five-stars. In a country with an average
annual income per capita of Rs 7655, sign-up fees of such proportions are way beyond the
means of all but the elitest of the elite.
Aerobic classes offer a cheaper option, costing
around Rs 150 for a one-hour session. However, trying to coordinate one’s flailing
arms and feet whilst travelling across the room to strains of Madonna is no mean feat -
and hardly a dignified experience. And attempting to follow the tricky workout of a
perfectly-sculpted woman with an impossibly lean physique and not a bead of sweat
glistening on her face isn’t everyone’s idea of fun.
However, if you can stick to exercise, the
rewards are multiple. As well as experiencing what one woman described as a
"euphoric, high feeling" after exercising, you may also end up recouping some of
the money you invested. A study by Michigan University has proved a direct link between
weight and wealth. Slimmer women may be at an economic advantage to their larger sisters.
Male bosses are less likely to promote their plump employees proving that slimmer women
earn more in their lifetime than their chubbier colleagues. So I’m afraid it’s
back to that running machine girls...
However, there is a darker side to the coin.
Whereas plumpness was once an indicator of prosperity, the Western weight stigma is on the
increase in Kathmandu, especially among young girls. Stories of figure-obsessed young
girls popping laxatives to keep their weight in check have appeared in the Kathmandu
press, with reports of increase in cases of anorexia - dangerous and rapid weight loss to
the point of starvation.
If all this talk of strenuous exercise is making
you break out in a cold sweat, perhaps you should resolve instead to follow Winston
Churchill’s maxim: "Whenever I feel like doing exercise I lie on my bed until
the feeling goes away."
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